"The Impact of Disease on Endangered Carnivores"

Craig Packer

The potential for frequent, virulent disease outbreaks has increased as human populations have come into closer contact with wildlife. The risk to humans from wildlife disease is widely recognized (e.g. Ebola, anthrax, and possibly SARS), but less attention has been paid to the risk to wildlife from domesticated animals. Wild dogs and Simien foxes have been decimated by rabies and lions by canine distemper, and both diseases originated from unvaccinated domestic dogs. Similar threats clearly endanger small isolated populations of wild carnivores that, by themselves, could never sustain deadly viruses. This paper emphasizes the impact of multi-host pathogens on long-term population trends in the Serengeti lions, and outlines the techniques we are using to measure the effectiveness of a large-scale dog vaccination program on the health of wild carnivores.